Silver is a part of the world's money, and it is and always will be a part of the money of every country, but there can never be a bimetallic standard of value in any one country. There never has been and there never will be.

Mr. Speaker, we have heard it said here, and it is the principal delusion cherished by our friends who support the amendments offered to this bill, that there was bimetallism in this country prior to 1873, and that there was bimetallism in France from 1803 to 1873. Now, I venture to state that, while there was free coinage of both metals in these two countries, there never was bimetallism in either, in the sense of the two metals circulating together. These two metals have never been, at one and the same time, the standard of value in any country, and, in the nature of things, one metal must always be the standard of value. This proposition was laid down by Locke, in 1695, when the principles of finance were still obscure, and when the experience of the human race, in a high state of civilization, had not contributed to the sum of human knowledge upon the subject. In one of the papers which Locke contributed to the discussions which preceded the recoinage in England, at the close of the seventeenth century, he said:

"Two metals, as gold and silver, cannot be the measure of commerce both together in any country, because the measure of commerce must be perpetually the same, invariable, and keeping the same proportion of value in all its parts. But so only metal does or can do itself; so silver is to silver and gold to gold. An ounce of silver is always of equal value to an ounce of silver, and an ounce of gold to an ounce of gold; and two ounces of the one or other of double the value of an ounce of the same. But gold and silver change their value one to another, for, supposing them to be in value as sixteen to one now, perhaps the next month they may be as fifteen and three-quarters or fifteen and seven-eighths to one. And one may as well take a measure, v. g., a yard whose parts lengthen and shrink, as a measure of trade of materials that have not always a settled, invariable value to one another."

And that doctrine was repeated by Mill, one hundred and fifty years afterward, when he said:

'The plan of a double standard is still occasionally brought forward by, here and there, a writer or orator as a great improvement in the currency. It is probable that, with most of its adherents, its chief merit is its tendency to a sort of depreciation, there being, at all times, abundance of supporters for any mode, either open or covert, of lowering the standard."

And again:

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The particular kind of variation to which the curency is rendered more

liable by having two legal standards is a fall of value, or what is commonly called a depreciation, since, practically, that one of the two metals will always be the standard, of which the real has fallen below the rated value."

Mr. Speaker, these are the speculations and conclusions of the two chief philosophers who have written on this subject. And what Locke declared, what Mill repeats, is attested by the experience of the whole human race. I make the statement here now- and I challenge my friend from Missouri (Mr. Bland) to contradict it, familiar as he is with the historical development of this question that never in the history of the world have these two metals circulated side by side as a double standard of value. They never will so circulate and they never can. Let us take the experience on this subject of the three leading countries of the world - Great Britain, France, and the United States. *

(From a speech delivered in the House of Representatives, August 26, 1893.)

Silver.

By THOMAS B. REED, of Maine.

(Born 1839.)

B

IMETALLISM by a single nation does not seem to be possible; bimetallism by all the nations of the world seems to me to be not only possible, but feasible. As I understand it, the object of bimetallism, and the avowed object of monometallism is to have a stable and persistent standard. The theory of the monometallist is that gold of itself is subject to less fluctuation, to less change than silver, to less fluctua

tion and change than both gold and silver together.

The theory of the bimetallist is that if two lakes, liable to be disturbed by different causes, can be connected and made to flow into each other interchangeably, they will present a much greater expanse, and any change of level will, therefore, be much less the change in each lake being distributed over both.

I can understand this theory as applied to the metallic standards of the world. I can understand that if gold by any accident should be undervalued in any country and driven out of that country, that would send it to the other countries; and the effect of that surplus of gold in the other countries would be to lower the price of gold, and, therefore, have a tendency to send it back to the original country; in other words, that the effect of the two lakes would be to cause a lesser variation in the level; but when you come to apply that doctrine to a single country, you will perceive at once that it cannot be applicable, that the effect of undervaluing one metal will necessarily be to drive that metal out of the country.

You do not have to indulge in any far-fetched theories to understand this. You do not have to discuss the question of the Gresham law at all. All you have to do is to apply yourself to the history of the United States; and the speech of the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Patterson), a brave and admirable speech, shows conclusively that this country, while it was pretending to be bimetallic in its standard, was never really so; that one metal drove the other out